Alumni Success Story

Joseph Vess, SIS/MA '10

August 5, 2013

Joseph Vess is a Senior Program Officer at Promundo, focusing on sexual and gender-based violence prevention and men's engagement in crisis, conflict and post-conflict settings. Among the projects he coordinates are Promundo’s work on SGBV prevention in post-conflict Central Africa, men’s engagement to prevent child abuse and child sexual exploitation in Eastern Europe, and violence prevention with young men and boys in the former Yugoslavia. He has worked with a wide variety of groups on bystander intervention skill-building, establishment of healthier masculine norms that challenge GBV, men's engagement in women's economic empowerment initiatives and acknowledging the detrimental effect that gender inequality has on men and women alike. He has a master's in international peace and conflict resolution from American University, where he focused on sexual violence in armed conflict in the Great Lakes region of Africa.